Reckless Abandon in Checkers and Politics

     When I was about ten years old, I played a very impressive game of checkers. Good enough to compete with the seasoned checker players who honed their skills at the train station, once upon a time.   Or so my father told me, and he was never one to hand out compliments unless they were well deserved, and even then with extreme scarcity.
     My father and I would play in the living room, after supper, with the homemade checkers he had fashioned by sawing an old broomstick into sections.  He painted some of them red, possibly with old nail polish, and probably about 18 of them, allowing for kinging, you know.  The others remained broomstick color, a shade of brown.  We understood they should be black.  He sat in his usual chair by the window, and I on the floor, with the tan naughahyde-covered rectangular footstool between us.  I don't exactly remember his teaching me to play, but I suppose he must have.  I do remember that as my skill level improved, the games, usually a set of 3, would go on longer into the night, sometimes even being called because of bedtime.  I'm sure he won most of the games, and I'm also certain he never let me win on purpose as a sop to a child.  Checkers was a serious game.  I remember once in a while we would tie:  each person with an equal number of kings that made it to the double corners resulted in no contest.
    When I was that age, in and around 10 years, I had the ability to lay out potential strategies based on whatever move my opponent might make, several, or more, moves ahead.  That was the age of intense concentration before the complications of life developed.
   I found that if I stuck to my basic game plan, I had the best chance of victory, or at least a very respectable effort.  Even if the other player would disrupt my longterm strategy, I would revert to what moves of my strategy still remained, and that would serve me well.
    Occasionally, though never in a game with my father, I would throw caution to the winds:  ignore my usual strategy.  Either because I was bored, playing with a lesser foe, or just because I wanted to see what would happen if I tried something different, I would play an entirely different game.  Almost always I would regret it.  My game would be in jeopardy, sometimes even suffering a loss.
   SO:   Just because you become somewhat disenfranchised with a system that has been in place for what seems too long, there is a definite risk in abandoning it in favor of something less tedious and more titillating.  Beware.